I recently negotiated a trade with a guy who goes by the username Vulture. Now the guy did have one piece of poor feedback, but he offered me what sounded like a fair and reasonable explanation. Now granted I do tend to be very generous when it comes to giving people the benefit of a doubt, I went ahead and traded what I thought was a bit too many figs for a supposed Batman chase fig he said he'd give to me in exchange. Personally, I really wanted the fig, so I went ahead and agreed to the trade under the condition that we'd send our figs at the same time, which we did (mind you with tracking confirmation). Well, I waited and checked, and the box apparently went somewhere else. When I tried to get in touch with him to find out what sort of explanation he had for this, he refused to respond. So needless to say, don't ever do any sort of trading with this guy. He most definitely isn't worth a penny of his word.

Ah ####, man, that's terrible. I feel your paid, dude (I got shafted trying to get a Galactus last year).

He actually FAKED a Delivery Confirmation? Damn...

Vulture got me and I gave him the negative feedback..he stole a $25 money order and also stole 4-5 sr's and uniques from me and gave me a fake DC# also....so i filed mail fraud and i actually filed for stealing .and actually a few days ago i got a paper saying it all went through and they are looking over it..and they will get in contact with him...He actually stole from another guy i cant remember his user name but he bribed him with a batman also.


All i can say is that feel for you



and this is this is crazy with all these scammers!

I am sorry to hear that you got taken. Totally sucks. One of the reasons I will usaully only go through a 3rd party like Hair10. I can kick him a fig or so and that way if the other person doesn't send, I'm only out the fig for the 3rd party. I would love if there was someone that would act as a 3rd party for all trades involving chase or high priced figs, especially with all the bad traders surfacing. I would volunteer, but I just don't think most would be comfortable because of my low trader rating.

If you're trading for a chase figure, and you don't have 101% confidence in your trading partner, you've got to go through a third party. There are just too many scams that involve chase figures.

Sounds like the guy was mailing a package soewhere else, and gave you the tracking number for that package. A tracking number doesn't mean much if you can't trust the other guy - you don't know what's actually in that package until it gets opened.

A third party who is acceptable to both traders is the way to go. If your trading partner won't trust a third party, then maybe you shouldn't trust him.

Man, that really blows. I hope that whatever you sent out were duplicates.

No offense to people with low itrade ratings, but I would not trust any newbie trader who has a chase figure. It seems way too convenient for my pessimistic demeanor.

If anyone needs an intermediary I can also help.

That's truly a sad tale, gandalf550. However, as others have posted, if you feel doubt either don't do the trade or take better precautions. Especially with the rash of bad traders (including many with high iTrader ratings) it behooves every trader to be extra-careful. While a tracking number is helpful, it doesn't mean anything if the agreed to figures aren't there.
Much better to err on the side of caution than get burned. And yes, I'm aware that hindsight isn't really helping in this situation, I'm just venting because of the glut of dirtbags that are apparently intent on ruining the trading here on the Realms. There's always been a small faction that seemed only worried about themselves and their next scam, but it's certainly been highly increased since Topps' announcement.

or maybe a list of people that are oked to do it by the mass community...

I have said that I am willing to maintain a list of 'official' third party traders as a service to the Realms. However, since I have no experience in third party trading myself I can't really write any official guidelines, so someone else will have to do that.

Just to let everyone know, I have spoken to gandalf550 at some length today at our venue. After some discussion on this, I believe that Vulture is Lojo. He apparently had the trademark poor grammar. He also used M. Steinmetz from 6th ave Brooklyn. BEWARE!!

This is depressingly sad. It does seem the scammers have double or tripled after Topps announcement. It's just sad.

I would gladly be the intermediary with any 3rd party trades. I've done a few as well as agreed to trade through a 3rd party trade despite my trade rating. So if any of you have any doubts, let me know and I'll be the middle man.

No ####. Lojo's the one who ripped me off, too. That really pisses me off to no end, that that prick is still on here (with his, what, fifth login) ripping people off.